Following Aberdeen’s 3-1 win over Kilmarnock, Neil Warnock announced he would be stepping down from the manager’s job with immediate effect.

“All along I’ve said I was here to help and that I would give my advice, and my advice is they should get the new manager in as soon as possible. It needs quite an overhaul of the squad in the summer and it’s no good waiting until then to get someone in. You need to give a manager the chance to look at it for a couple of months, so he knows what needs doing over the summer. The recruitment needs to be spot on in the summer.

“I’m glad I was able to get the fans to the semi-final before I left, and I think we deserved it, we were superior in every department. It’s a shame I can’t lead them out at Hampden, but I think the players are starting to see what’s required. Angus and Stefan set the standard at the back today, we were more physical than them, but we could play as well.

“We gave a stupid goal away again, but overall, the energy and the enthusiasm and the creativity was excellent and the fans generated a good atmosphere. The lads know what they’re doing now, they just need to believe in themselves.

“Everyone came in with their chin on the floor on Monday and we had a meeting to get that St Mirren game behind us. I knew I had to get them going again. ‘How do you think I feel at 75? We haven’t got time to feel sorry for ourselves, we’ve got to get on with it.’ Training was good from there and I thought we were super today.

“This is a massive club, it shouldn’t be floundering where we are, but players have to take responsibility. They did that today, they set the standard and they have to stick with that. The fact is, the last few weeks, we’ve worked hard to lose games that we shouldn’t have, we should have seven or nine points more.

“A lot of the goals we’ve conceded in my time aren’t anything tactical, they’re just bad goals. Once you eliminate that, as we nearly did today, you’ve got a chance with the group of players that we’ve got. Overall though, it was a proper performance today and I hope they’ll keep to that standard now. I think they will.”